Influx

The history books tell us that brands first evolved as a trust mark, a physical “brand” that identified livestock. The “physical mark” helped people to link the animal to real live human being, who could account for its existence. The transaction and the relationship were simple, clear and transparent.

A recent article in the Observer shows that things are going astray with the UK’s organic food market. It suggests grocery stores are mislabeling products and farmers are spraying fields with pesticides in the early morning and late at night, but pass themselves off as organic. The system put in place to monitor activities is understaffed and under-resourced so things are falling through the cracks. Brands are labeling themselves organic, grocery stores are selling them and consumers trust them because of “branding”, but for how much longer?

What should these brands do next?

Nothing?
Own up and be honest?
Create their own monitoring system?
Lobby the government to do more?

Brands are essential for marketing; they help companies to gain recognition and awareness and they grow revenues, but with great power comes great responsibility.

This responsibility comes crystal clear in high profile legal cases like Merck, but it also extends to the often seemingly mundane interactions that occur between brands and companies everyday. The story of blogger Jeff Jarvis his personal customer service experience with Dell is now well known to those “web savants”.

Just look at this link tracker to see how far this baby went. The web can be truly explosive and is impossible to control. The issue has the potential to spread like a wild fire, so you had better be ready with a response.

The PR industry is at the front end of this, the industrial age concept that the message can be controlled and stories can be contained is well and truly over.

So what do companies do?

Do they change policies and become much more open?

Do they use crisis management tactics for every single event?

Like it or not, the age of transparent branding is here to stay, do you have a plan?